Regional History

Hear the sounds of gunfire, the footsteps of Israeli soldiers as they draw closer and closer and as General Uzi Narkiss instructs them and asks to be shown where the Western Wall stands. Hear triumphant Brigadier, General Shlomo Goren, who was later to become the Chief Rabbi of Israel, as he recites the memorial prayer and sounds the shofar as Israeli soldiers weep with sorrow over their comrades killed in combat.

On the evening of February 4th, 1997, Israelis found themselves anxiously glued to news flashes on television and radio, after two Israeli Defense Force helicopters collided high above Sha'ar-Yeshuv in the North of Israel.

Op-ed: After 9/11, it seemed the world would be never be the same, that it was waking up, beginning to understand; but jihad has become stronger and more murderous, and the free world is even more powerless.

It's no longer a war with a radical organization. It's something else. Something the human mind finds difficult to deal with. There are wars. There is brutality against rivals and enemies. There are exceptions in every war. But when it comes to jihad, horror is a norm. Slaughtering a person in front of the cameras appeared to be the lowest point. We were wrong. The burning of the Jordanian pilot clarifies that we are witnessing something much darker. Pure evil that is turned into a snuff film.

Teddy Kollek: 'The world will always continue to be worried about the faith of Jerusalem'

In 1971, four years after the reuniting of the city of Jerusalem in the Six-Day war, reporter Arnold Forster interviewed Teddy Kollek, then Mayor, for Dateline Israel . Kollek regarded the issues of the development of the newly formed city, which at the time received world attention and was highly controversial.

On the first day of the Jewish feast of Hanukkah in December 1917, the Battle of Jerusalem resulted in the city of Jerusalem falling to British forces led by General Allenby, after 400 years under Turkish rule.

Operation Entebbe, also known as the Entebbe Raid or Operation Thunderbolt, was a counter-terrorism hostage-rescue mission carried out by the Israel Defense Force at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on the early morning of July 4, 1976. In the wake of the hijacking of Air France flight 139 and the hijackers' threats to kill the hostages if their prisoner release demands were not met, a plan was drawn up to airlift the hostages to safety.

Between June of 1949 and September of 1950, the newborn state of Israel absorbed its first wave of Jewish immigration from the Muslim world. 49,000 Yemenite Jews were brought to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet, or what is also commonly known as Operation On Wings of Eagles, named so after Exodus 19:4 and Isaiah 40:31.

President Shimon Peres is one of Israel's longest serving, and most respected of politicians, having served as both Prime Minister and President of Israel - the only politician to do so, to date. President Shimon Peres is one of Israel's longest serving, and most respected of politicians, having served as both Prime Minister and President of Israel - the only politician to do so, to date.

The Altalena Affair was a violent confrontation that took place in June of 1948, during the War of Independence, between the newly-formed Israel Defense Forces and the Irgun (Etzel), a paramilitary Jewish group. The confrontation involved a cargo ship, Altalena, which carried weapons and fighters for the Irgun.

Danny Ayalon: ‘Half of Israel’s residents are Jewish refugees, or their progeny, who were driven out of Arab countries after they attack the Jewish state in 1948’

It is probably the least known fact in the long and vociferous Arab-Israeli conflict, but more Jewish refugees were forced to flee from their homes in the Arab countries than all the Palestinians who were forced to flee or left of their own volition, from the newly born state of Israel in 1948.

At a Jerusalem news conference, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon announced that Israel insisted that the Jewish refugees be ‘a core element in any future negotiation or settlement to resolve the conflict’.

The stunning victory of the Six Day War gave way to nation-wide enthusiasm and euphoria, even some of the Palestinian residents were excited and now hoped that better days had arrived.

As a result, this uplifting national spirit inspired many new songs that singers and military bands performed for troops all across the country - the Sinai, the West Bank, the Jordan Valley, and Golan Heights.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is Israel's oldest and largest university. It has been ranked as one of the 100 most outstanding academic institutions in the world. The First Board of Governors included Albert Einstein , Sigmund Freud , Martin Buber and Chaim Weizmann.

This month the Jewish world will cite the one hundredth anniversary of one of the most painful events in the history of the Jews in Muslim lands - the "Tritel" – the pogrom in Fez, Morocco that occurred between April 17 and 19, 1912.

A Radio Documentry by BBC reporter Patrick Gordon Walker

Listen to historic recording of a 1945 BBC broadcast from liberated Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi concentration camp, featuring the singing of "Hatikva" by the surviving Jewish prisoners. Allied troops liberated the camp on April 15, 1945.

Chaim Azriel Weizmann was a chemist, a Zionist leader, President of the World Zionist Organization and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on February 1, 1949, and served until 1952. Weizmann founded the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

The Druze people reside primarily in Israel, Syria and Lebanon. It is an Arab-speaking community loyal to the state that has suffered hundreds of casualties in its defense, and whose men serve today in high-ranking and sensitive positions within the Israeli military and security forces. In Israel the majority of the Druze consider themselves a distinct ethnic group and do not identify themselves as Arab.

Crystal Night, or the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom in Nazi Germany on November 9–10, 1938. On a single night, 92 Jews were murdered and 25,000–30,000 were arrested and deported to concentration camps.